Google Penguin 4.0 ( the real-time update) has started! During the last few days a very high SERP volatility was reported by most of the SERP monitoring tools. Lots of tools reported high volatility starting from the 6th of January. The highest spike was reported by Algoroo on the 10th of Jan. People also talk a lot on the SEO related forums about the volatility they see.

Dominating SERPS is what all of us dream of. And, despite popular opinion, being on the 2nd page of a query’s results doesn’t mean that you’re not interested in publishing great content that solely serves the reader’s’ interest. Sometimes it means just that the industry is highly competitive and it’s almost humanly impossible to outsmart the competitors.

It’s impossible not to be synced anymore. Everything is on cloud and the amount of information we come across every day is unprecedented. The difficulty of any digital marketer’s mission is not letting themselves be distracted by the connectivity and hyperlinking on the web. While we have never been more exposed to information, it’s now harder than ever to keep focused and pri ...

The internet is a scary thing. Who knows what you could find out there, on the dark side. You must be very careful to avoid being a victim of the numerous SEO mistakes that exist on the internet, such as the defective management of site links, short content blogs, flash content, poorly written content, missed title tags or meta descriptions to slow website speed, deindexation o ...

You might have heard the saying “If you want something done right, do it yourself!” more than once. Before agreeing or disagreeing on it, indulge me while I tell you a bit of its origins. A French writer named Charles Étienne is the “father” of this world wide used phrase but the literal translation is actually – ” One is never served so well as by oneself “- .

In the old days of Black Hat SEO, these techniques, tricks, tactics or however you’d like to call them may have worked, until the search engines started taking actions and updating algorithms to penalize websites using such Black Hat SEO Techniques. And, as the search engines don’t like to let themselves and their users be tricked, they took measures to keep the search results ...

Groupon is being accused of running "false and misleading business and advertising acts" and running "bait and switch" ads on Google.com, according to a lawsuit filed by a bus tour company in San Francisco.

OK, Google! Please write an article for the cognitiveSEO blog that will bring millions of readers and shares. As I got no luck with Google Assistant, I’ve tried the same thing with Siri and Cortana, just that this time I’ve been more polite. I said “please”. Still no luck. This being said, after a few more attempts I reconciled with the idea that I have to document and write on ...

There is no need to stress more the fact that Google has just made an innovative update: Penguin 4.0 – a real-time, granular algorithm update that allows both real-time penalties and incredibly quick recoveries. However, with such a big controversy around this update, what we need to dwell on more are case studies and analyses in order to have the best understanding of the late ...

Penguin 4.0 is here and is real-time. This means that the Penguin portion of the algorithm will always be “on” and updating from now on. As we have previously developed in an earlier blog post, Penguin going real-time is huge news for the SEO community. With Penguin 4.0, the algorithm should now catch spam link profiles more quickly.

There is a lot of buzz and fuzz regarding the influence of shares, comments, likes, etc. on SEO in general. Yet, the question that is on everyone’s lips is actually: “Are social signals a ranking factor?” There have been lots of discussions around this topic, both pros and cons; even some studies were conducted on it. Yet, no clear light has been shed on the matter.

Long content or short content? Which one is better? What is the case? The more the merrier, or less is more? Well, the answer is rather complicated and needs a bit of unpacking. If you are looking for a short answer you need to know that there is no such thing. Long and short content alike can be better, depending on the context and on your needs: rankings, conversions, followe ...

Creating high quality content is a highly important aspect, not only for gaining high ranks but firstly for making users or readers happy. Yet, we all know that running a blog with constant valuable and high quality content might sometimes be difficult as it is a resource-consuming process. Therefore, why not getting the best out of the content that you’ve already worked on? ...

Every site owner’s dream (and goal) is to rank as high as possible for their target audience. Every search engine’s dream (and goal) is to make sure that the most relevant websites rank the highest. But how is that relevancy built and interpreted? Does it have anything to do with what you say? That much we know to be true.

I always advocate the idea of taking a step back to see the larger picture. When it comes to digital marketing, this is a crucial step – as it can easily point out what is currently missing from the approach you’re implementing for your website. Always make sure you’ve still got the big picture in mind, however complicated this may sometimes seem.

Here, at cognitiveSEO, we believe that things are always evolving, and that such evolution is nothing but necessary. Not only for us, but for our day to day users, our readers, our fans, our critics as well. We strive to push our limits and overcome our struggles. And when we do, we get to know ourselves better.

Email open rates represent the ultimate effectiveness of the emails you’re sending to your audience and your leads, and the better they are in composition, structure and spamming, the more you’re going to grow in a sustainable way. That’s why we’ve put together (probably) the largest list of hands on tips to help you nail email marketing and build a better strategy for your ROI.

Bad marketing is, most of the time, simply bad strategy. For instance, it might be tempting to think that all you need to succeed today is a strong social media presence and fan base. However, that would be a huge mistake on your part, strategically. Sure, social media might be a good place to promote a product or service, but there isn’t really any return on investment on that ...

At cognitiveSEO we’re not just about creating new features or tools, but also about recognizing when existing tools are vital to our customers’ businesses. Our users’ experience is what matters most to us and what helps us evolve. So when something is as ubiquitous as Google Analytics, we think the best thing we can do for our users is to make it easy for them to use it as part ...